cauliflower pizza crust: no flour, no worries

Finally! I’ve waited so long to show you this cauliflower pizza crust, it felt like ages. But I wanted to create a bulletproof recipe first, learn the tricks so that I can share them with you. Now I think I have a pretty good one and I have an evidence for it too. I prepared the pizza yesterday, but it disappeared in a couple of minutes and now my boyfriend – who absolutely hates shopping – is trying to persuade me right now to go and buy some cauliflower ‘just in case’. 🙂

The pros for the cauliflower pizza crust

For those who haven’t tried the cauliflower pizza crust before: don’t be afraid of the taste, it’s barely recognizable. I’m not that into cauliflower either, but I couldn’t spot that funny taste this time. According to my boyfriend’s mother it’s like an ordinary pizza with lots of veggies. Fair enough, don’t you think? Surely it won’t give you the same fluffy and crunchy white flour experience, but for me it’s been a long time since I ate something like that. And I’m not missing it either when I’m able to have a healthier choice which is also great.

For me it’s a huge relief that I don’t feel tired and fatigue after eating, like I usually do after eating pizzas made of gluten-free flours. Besides cauliflower pizza crust is good for the metabolism and the blood sugar level won’t be much affected by it either. And our bathroom scale won’t be shocked the day after. As for me, I’m completely satisfied.

And here’s one more big plus: the cauliflower pizza crust can be prepared easier and faster than the original one. I will tell you all the tricks I learned recently, and you’ll see it’s a piece of cake 🙂

Ingredients

1 large cauliflower head

1 large egg

1 cup mozzarella cheese

salt

pepper

oregano

nutmeg

thyme

Serves 2

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180 °C.

2. Grate the cleansed cauliflower. You can either use a box grater or a food processor as well, the goal is to get rice-like cauliflower pieces. I used a stick mixer yesterday, so the result was little finer, almost like potato puree. See:

grated cauliflower

3. Tip all the cauliflower in a large bowl and microwave for 7 minutes or until soft.

4. Place onto a clean tea towel and let it cool. Then scrunch up the tea towel and squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the cauliflower. It will be a surprisingly huge amount. And be careful not to burn your hand!

tea towel and nail swag

5. Transfer the squeezed cauliflower in a dry bowl and mix in the egg, mozzarella, salt, pepper and spices. Once combined, mound the mix into the center of a tray, then use your hands to spread it out as good as you can. Mine looked like this:

before baking

6. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and crispy on the edges:

almost done

7. Top the pizza with anything you like and then bake it again until the cheese is melted. For this pizza we used homemade tomato sauce, black and green olives, mozzarella cheese, tomatoes (sliced and drained), artichoke, red peppers, red onion, pesto and meat.